noindex

noindex is a directive, delivered as a meta robots tag or an X-Robots-Tag HTTP header, that tells a search engine not to include a page in its index. It is the only reliable way to remove a page from search results, and the page must be crawlable for it to work.

Two delivery methods, identical effect:

html

<meta name="robots" content="noindex">

http

X-Robots-Tag: noindex

The header version is the one to use for non-HTML files such as PDFs, where there is no <head> to put a tag in.

The rule that catches everyone: noindex only works if the crawler can fetch the page and read the directive. Blocking the URL in robots.txt and adding noindex guarantees the directive is never seen, and the URL can remain listed. Allow the fetch, serve the noindex, and wait for the page to be recrawled.

noindex is also not the same as nofollow, and combining them stops link signals passing through a page you are removing. For a page you want out of the index but still passing value through its links, noindex, follow is the combination — though a page that is not indexed will eventually have its links treated as nofollow regardless.

Read the full guide to technical foundations

noindex

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